My home parish is Sacred Heart. The Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus fell on this past Friday. Our pastor decided since it was our parish ‘Feast’ day, that it should be moved to the Sunday liturgy so that the entire parish could attend Mass in celebration, instead of the handful of us who attend daily Mass. Unfortunately, in so doing the Solemnity of Sts. Peter and Paul got shoved aside.

My question is can that Pastor arbitrarily ‘move’ a Solemnity like that, particularly when it then bumps out another Solemnity?

My question is can that Pastor arbitrarily ‘move’ a Solemnity like that, particularly when it then bumps out another Solemnity?

Technically, no. Solemnities of the Lord and of Saints in the General Calendar (e.g. saints Peter and Paul) take precedence over saints that are patrons of the parish, town or diocese which are raised to solemnities in said locales, but usually aren’t elsewhere.

The charitable thing to do is assume that your pastor made an honest error, rather than deliberately broke the rules. In responding I had to re-read them a couple of times myself because they aren’t that obvious. Patrons of a location was listed as “proper solemnities” (my LOTH is in French) which I thought to mean saints on the calendar only to discover that saints on the calendar was one level above in the hierarchy.

In any event it will likely be several years before the dates all line up like that again, so this mistake may never again happen.

The more rules there are, the easier it is to inadvertently break them :shrug:

My home parish is Sacred Heart. The Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus fell on this past Friday. Our pastor decided since it was our parish ‘Feast’ day, that it should be moved to the Sunday liturgy so that the entire parish could attend Mass in celebration, instead of the handful of us who attend daily Mass. Unfortunately, in so doing the Solemnity of Sts. Peter and Paul got shoved aside.

My question is can that Pastor arbitrarily ‘move’ a Solemnity like that, particularly when it then bumps out another Solemnity?

My parish is also Sacred Heart. In years past, our pastor has had the Archbishop’s permission to move the Solemnity to the Sunday since it is our patronage. But this year, the two “bookending” Sundays were already Solemnities (Corpus Christi and Peter & Paul) so it was not moved. I think permission can be given to move a patron commemoration to an Ordinary Time Sunday but not to “bump” another Solemnity.

Which readings did you have?
We celebrate our Feast Day every year on a Sunday, but we keep the correct readings of the day.

The readings for the Sacred Heart of Jesus were used.

I could understand if the Sunday liturgy was ‘Ordinary Time’ and he chose to move the Solemnity, but not when it bumps another Solemnity.

He did the same thing last year, but it was ‘Ordinary Time’, so nothing was bumped.

I would think had he asked permission from Diocese, he would have been told due to the other Solemnity falling on Sunday that he could not move it this year, but I don’t know for sure one way or the other. Just doesn’t seem right to me. You know what they say about ‘good intentions’.